As fall proceeds into the tilting planet effect on our daily journey circling the sun, the cooler temperature combined with diminishing daylight of Montreal advances with certainty toward the first blanketing snowfall, to become a winter city.

Nature will also have prepared those small mammals that linger in their territory despite the intrusion of humans onto their island home. As their bodies metabolic fire winds down to the barely felt embers of suspended life, they behave as if a massive stroke has sidelined their brains. Yet unlike the ravages of real strokes erasing totally viable zones of affected brain cells, each hibernating brain rises reborn phoenix like from their suspended dormant state without consequence as winter will draw to its close when our tilting planet reaches its spring inclination for those in the north. The recapture of spring city sun swells into window sills. Outside, the animals shake off their slumber with brains protected.